Poems by ​Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

The Pimp

O the ignominy of my lovemaking!The marble-chipped kitchen floor,the cold linoleumed living room,your narrow bunk, my double bed,the dark corners,the sitting, the standing,even the bathroom with its shampoosand toothbrushes.And I offered you nothingbut these moments:incredibly mad and passionate;incredibly obscene and delightful;incredibly mean and generous;incredibly cruel and tender.And I promised you nothingbut the remote possibility that one daythe sourness of lemon might changeto the sweetness of orange.And yet you opened everything to me:your lips with their succulent taste,your breasts with their acupuncture nipples,your thighs with their ultimate gift;even your simple soulthat I afterwards condemnedto prowl the town’s sleazy hotel rooms.O, the relentless nights of remorse!I offer you the accursed prayers of a pimp.

Sundori

Beloved Sundori,Yesterday one of my peopleKilled one of your people And one of your peopleKilled one of my people. Today they have both swornTo kill on sight. But this is neither you nor I,Shall we meet by the Umkhrah River And empty this madnessInto its angry summer floods?I send this messageThrough a fearful night breeze, Please leave your window open.

About the poet

Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih (1964) has published a number of books in Khasi (the language of his tribe) and English besides edited volumes and translation works of poetry, short stories and drama. His collections of poetry in English include Moments, TheSieve (Writers Workshop), TheYearning of Seeds and Time’s Barter: Haiku and Senryu (HarperCollins). He is the author of Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends (Penguin) and the co-editor of Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India (Penguin).

His awards include the first Veer Shankar Shah-Raghunath Shah National Award for literature (Madhya Pradesh, 2008) and the first North-East Poetry Award (Tripura, 2004). He teaches literature at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, where he lives.

World’s first major ecopoetry award. With a first prize of £5,000 for the best single poem embracing ecological themes, the award ranks amongst the highest of any English language single poem competition. Second prize is £2,000 and third prize £1,000.